despite playing through skyrim five or six times ive only completed the main story once or twice. ill pick a path i want the character to go down, which generally involves about 30 levels of exploration and adventure. after the mage finishes the mages guild the bard finished the college or the knight kills defeat the Stormcloaks, i have them get married, buy a house and adopt a child. after that i sit them down in front of the fireplace, save the game and never pick them up again. Im not condemning them to death in my mind, just deciding that the rest of their life doesnt need to be orchestrated by me. the interesting part is over, so ill leave them to be happy. more often than not i feel they deserve that
@@WhiteRoomMan Your experience is so close to mine that its kinda spooky. I even stopped real close to level 30 just recently. I should start finishing my playthroughs by having a proper goodbye, even if it's just a short one like you described, getting married, sitting down by the fire, and turning it off one last time. It would help it feel complete. Great comment, thank you.
I recently ended a skyrim playthrough for the first time, exactly like you described it. All my other runs just ended when they kind of... fizzled out. But with this one, I did all the questing and exploring I felt like doing and when things started getting from fun to tedious, I mopped up all the unfinished questlines and such, I had my character build a home, get married, adopt a child or two and then just retire to his home. I have a screenshot of the last moment of playing that character, sitting on his balcony with a mead and some baked goods, looking out into the tundra near Rorikstead.
@@neburiveS Taking a screenshot is actually a really fun idea. It captures the final moment of the story you've played, and you can look at it to reflect on your adventure at a glance. I really like that.
That's why, nowadays, as I'm approaching my 30's, only games like RimWorld, CDDA, zomboid and dwarf fortress are the only games I actually have high emotions playing, because there are stakes, I can't hit replay infinitely and I don't have an eternity to make stuff
Maybe it's something about hitting the 30's, because those types of games are exactly the ones that I come back to the most these days. You talk about experiencing high levels of emotion, and that is spot-on for me as well. I think it might have something to do with the fact that these games tend to let things go really wrong sometimes, your characters can die, your game can end. Those stakes, as you said, are really high. At least for me, the occasional disaster causes intense feelings that you can't get any other way: Defeat, Disappointment, Rage, etc. These feelings don't sound like fun on their own, but I think you need to experience them to get to the really good stuff: Redemption, Overcoming, Reconciliation (or Revenge), etc. Great comment. Seems like we enjoy a lot of the same stuff.
@@gamesbydesign8037 It's certainly something about being 30's, older brain gets used to emotions because we've feeling them all our life but it's so that I've been gaming for 20 years, there's really nothing new in AAA, there's a few in indies that are new, but games like those where my decisions really matter are very very few rdr2 and witcher 3 decisions "mattering" is really just a scam and a hoax, your gonna beat the game no matter what, nothing completely tragic has even a chance to happen, because you'll just reload when your character dies, so what's the purpose of playing a chess game if you know who is going to win?
I think subnautica (first one at least) ended well, after all the horrors and grind and base building and exploring you finally finish building your final goal of building a rocket to escape, and once you get in the rocket and fly back home its one of the most satisfying endings because you finally get that end "anxiety" where you like "do I finish the rocket? and leave now? or do i stay and see if i missed anything?" ultimately to end up finally leaving after a long and satisfying journey, I've beat the game 3 times back when I played it and every time I got on the rocket to leave I just felt content with my adventure like it was a satisfying and fulfilling journey and I was happy to finally end it.
a good open world ending I can think of is Enderal, it's a "skyrim mod" technically but, it's basically it's own game. spoiler ahead (you should really try it tho): it works just like skyrim or most open world, with a main quest, but you can go around explore for yourself, do most dongeon (some have a quest requierement to progress further but that's normal) do secondary quest and everything BUT, unlike skyrim, the main quest does affect the world, there are series of event that make the world really change and unlike most open world, you "feel" the time passing by with it, some quest can be failed becaused the events of the main quest made the npc, or the location, or the reason for that quest unavailable anymore. and at some point you get a message telling you "you should save here, there is no coming back", that's the end, the end of the storyline quest, that lead to an actual end of the game. Once you finish the story, you aren't thrown back in that empty map with nothing more to do, your quest is over, and the game is too.
Oh no! Now I might have to play Skyrim again! And I just finished it, too. Thanks for the mod recommendation, that's one I haven't actually heard of. I've never tried a total conversion mod like Enderal before, so this might be the first. If it really captures the sense that time is passing and the world is responding to your actions, that makes me very interested to try it. Thanks!
"In some old games like Might and Magic or Darklands, they added aging, so there's a time limit, you can't play eternally. Your character would get older, lowering their stats and fighting capacity, and ultimately, they would die. There's the option to continue playing by recruiting new characters at level 1. but "inheriting" gold and gear from the previous generation
It's interesting to realize that this feature was more common in older games. I have a sneaking suspicion there's an interest and market for a return (or "renaissance", if you will) to some ideas that we haven't seen (not as much, anyway) since the 90's or 00's. Glad you visited our channel. Always reassuring to know there are some who still play the classics.
Postal 2 did it best. When you finish your last quest on Friday, a newspaper pops up reporting that the apocalypse has begun (along with a curiously specific denial from the military about its cause) and stray cats rain down from the sky as you head home, where your wife will nag you for forgetting her rocky road ice cream, followed by a delightfully ambiguous gunshot (which the DLC subsequently ruined by disambiguating).
I feel like a big part of the pitfall lies in the nature of these types of games & the freedom they give the player. They choose which parts of the world, which questlines, where to go & when. Having a satisfying ending is reliant on the specific journey. Games like Skyrim have both a major and minor set of payoffs for questlines. The main one is fighting Alduin where you do the part of the Dragonborn. Then smaller ones like the Thieves Guild questline have the payoff of meeting Nocturne and becoming a Nightingale, or assassinating the Emperor with the Dark Brotherhood. But if that's not enough, or if you get done everything, it goes into "leftovers" territory. The chef has prepared sequences of 5 course meals, and you ate them in your own order. But by a certain point, you have to go home and just eat the leftovers, away from the chef's control. All stories told from here on out are on your terms with the systems in place. As far as a solution, I find that endings are most satisfying in this genre when they address the challenges relevant to parts of the world. Making the landmarks of each unique region's questline come together for one massive payoff and emphasizing their contribution is really important. Maybe it's artifacts, characters, or the people of those lands. Once you're there, all that's left is to have the cutscene show the player character settling down, dying, or coming to some canonical end. Even if it is open-ended, as long as the vibes communicate a conclusion, it works. Pokémon has been good at that, because as a child you aren't going to simply stop growing or training Pokémon, but it acknowledges that you worked hard, became the champion, and you may even return home and bask in how far you came. But, it usually continues with a clear distinction that we are now in an "epilogue" state, hinting that from here on out the events aren't so strictly canon.
Comparing it to a restaurant experience versus "leftovers" works surprisingly well. Great analogy. Also, you've got me thinking that maybe it doesn't take much, doesn't need to be grand or elaborate. Something, as you said, that communicates the right vibes for a conclusion, and acknowledges the player's contributions, even if only briefly, might be totally appropriate. Thanks for your comment! You're helping us get better at this.
Divine cybermancy did it correctly, I think. If you finish all the routes, you can basically seal yourself on a deserted floating island to escape the cycles of guilt (ie. the game). This gives you a finishing point. BUT, at the center of the island is a seal. At any point, you can break that seal and start a NG+.
i think the premise of the question is incorrect. open world doesn't reference the narrative, therefore the "end" only goes as far as the narrative leads you. if you want a game with a true end of life experience you need to remove the guard rails of a narrative. something between a RPG and a Sandbox. where NPCs also participate in crafting the world, and are also afflicted by the sands of time.
I think you've nailed exactly why I love the Crusader Kings franchise so much, at least for what it attempts to be. Its ambition is to be a blend of strategy/simulation where anything can happen (and, like you said, where NPCs also participate and influence the world) with RPG elements and character-driven stories. Thanks for your comment!
@@zekebrunt Maybe that's what Star Wars Outlaws should have been: a Star Wars game where you play as R2-D2 and spend the whole game influencing major political events without ever getting any of the credit.
A lot of open world games have endings. Just because it's open world doesn't mean there's no ending. A lot of survival games you keep going when there's no final boss till you get bored or feel like you beat it.
You're absolutely right. It seems like being open-world doesn't at all limit the game from having a satsifying ending, it just changes how that ending can be handled. Then, there are some games that just don't have endings, or have endings poorly tacked on. I'm sure there's an art to getting it just right. If you've got any more insights, please let us know!
@gamesbydesign8037 Well Phantasy Star 4 is an old RPG that is open world from the 90's. It has an amazing storyline to it. Up until FF13 all Final Fantasy games before it that where part of the main Final Fantasy games were all open world. Some have better endings than others. Yeah definitely some have better endings than others that's for sure. The art to getting it right is all on the story of the game.
despite playing through skyrim five or six times ive only completed the main story once or twice. ill pick a path i want the character to go down, which generally involves about 30 levels of exploration and adventure. after the mage finishes the mages guild the bard finished the college or the knight kills defeat the Stormcloaks, i have them get married, buy a house and adopt a child. after that i sit them down in front of the fireplace, save the game and never pick them up again. Im not condemning them to death in my mind, just deciding that the rest of their life doesnt need to be orchestrated by me. the interesting part is over, so ill leave them to be happy. more often than not i feel they deserve that
@@WhiteRoomMan Your experience is so close to mine that its kinda spooky. I even stopped real close to level 30 just recently.
I should start finishing my playthroughs by having a proper goodbye, even if it's just a short one like you described, getting married, sitting down by the fire, and turning it off one last time. It would help it feel complete.
Great comment, thank you.
I recently ended a skyrim playthrough for the first time, exactly like you described it.
All my other runs just ended when they kind of... fizzled out.
But with this one, I did all the questing and exploring I felt like doing and when things started getting from fun to tedious, I mopped up all the unfinished questlines and such, I had my character build a home, get married, adopt a child or two and then just retire to his home.
I have a screenshot of the last moment of playing that character, sitting on his balcony with a mead and some baked goods, looking out into the tundra near Rorikstead.
@@neburiveS Taking a screenshot is actually a really fun idea. It captures the final moment of the story you've played, and you can look at it to reflect on your adventure at a glance. I really like that.
That's why, nowadays, as I'm approaching my 30's, only games like RimWorld, CDDA, zomboid and dwarf fortress are the only games I actually have high emotions playing, because there are stakes, I can't hit replay infinitely and I don't have an eternity to make stuff
Maybe it's something about hitting the 30's, because those types of games are exactly the ones that I come back to the most these days.
You talk about experiencing high levels of emotion, and that is spot-on for me as well. I think it might have something to do with the fact that these games tend to let things go really wrong sometimes, your characters can die, your game can end. Those stakes, as you said, are really high. At least for me, the occasional disaster causes intense feelings that you can't get any other way: Defeat, Disappointment, Rage, etc. These feelings don't sound like fun on their own, but I think you need to experience them to get to the really good stuff: Redemption, Overcoming, Reconciliation (or Revenge), etc.
Great comment. Seems like we enjoy a lot of the same stuff.
@@gamesbydesign8037 It's certainly something about being 30's,
older brain gets used to emotions because we've feeling them all our life
but it's so that I've been gaming for 20 years, there's really nothing new in AAA, there's a few in indies that are new, but games like those where my decisions really matter are very very few
rdr2 and witcher 3 decisions "mattering" is really just a scam and a hoax, your gonna beat the game no matter what, nothing completely tragic has even a chance to happen,
because you'll just reload when your character dies, so what's the purpose of playing a chess game if you know who is going to win?
I think subnautica (first one at least) ended well, after all the horrors and grind and base building and exploring you finally finish building your final goal of building a rocket to escape, and once you get in the rocket and fly back home its one of the most satisfying endings because you finally get that end "anxiety" where you like "do I finish the rocket? and leave now? or do i stay and see if i missed anything?" ultimately to end up finally leaving after a long and satisfying journey, I've beat the game 3 times back when I played it and every time I got on the rocket to leave I just felt content with my adventure like it was a satisfying and fulfilling journey and I was happy to finally end it.
They really did such a good job making that rocket part exciting. Just building it is fun on its own.
a good open world ending I can think of is Enderal, it's a "skyrim mod" technically but, it's basically it's own game. spoiler ahead (you should really try it tho):
it works just like skyrim or most open world, with a main quest, but you can go around explore for yourself, do most dongeon (some have a quest requierement to progress further but that's normal) do secondary quest and everything BUT, unlike skyrim, the main quest does affect the world, there are series of event that make the world really change and unlike most open world, you "feel" the time passing by with it, some quest can be failed becaused the events of the main quest made the npc, or the location, or the reason for that quest unavailable anymore. and at some point you get a message telling you "you should save here, there is no coming back", that's the end, the end of the storyline quest, that lead to an actual end of the game. Once you finish the story, you aren't thrown back in that empty map with nothing more to do, your quest is over, and the game is too.
Oh no! Now I might have to play Skyrim again! And I just finished it, too. Thanks for the mod recommendation, that's one I haven't actually heard of. I've never tried a total conversion mod like Enderal before, so this might be the first. If it really captures the sense that time is passing and the world is responding to your actions, that makes me very interested to try it. Thanks!
@gamesbydesign8037 well it captures it in the sense that there are some changes depending on main quest
"In some old games like Might and Magic or Darklands, they added aging, so there's a time limit, you can't play eternally. Your character would get older, lowering their stats and fighting capacity, and ultimately, they would die. There's the option to continue playing by recruiting new characters at level 1. but "inheriting" gold and gear from the previous generation
It's interesting to realize that this feature was more common in older games. I have a sneaking suspicion there's an interest and market for a return (or "renaissance", if you will) to some ideas that we haven't seen (not as much, anyway) since the 90's or 00's.
Glad you visited our channel. Always reassuring to know there are some who still play the classics.
Postal 2 did it best. When you finish your last quest on Friday, a newspaper pops up reporting that the apocalypse has begun (along with a curiously specific denial from the military about its cause) and stray cats rain down from the sky as you head home, where your wife will nag you for forgetting her rocky road ice cream, followed by a delightfully ambiguous gunshot (which the DLC subsequently ruined by disambiguating).
@@desertdude540 Now THAT is a conclusion!
I feel like a big part of the pitfall lies in the nature of these types of games & the freedom they give the player. They choose which parts of the world, which questlines, where to go & when. Having a satisfying ending is reliant on the specific journey. Games like Skyrim have both a major and minor set of payoffs for questlines. The main one is fighting Alduin where you do the part of the Dragonborn. Then smaller ones like the Thieves Guild questline have the payoff of meeting Nocturne and becoming a Nightingale, or assassinating the Emperor with the Dark Brotherhood.
But if that's not enough, or if you get done everything, it goes into "leftovers" territory. The chef has prepared sequences of 5 course meals, and you ate them in your own order. But by a certain point, you have to go home and just eat the leftovers, away from the chef's control. All stories told from here on out are on your terms with the systems in place.
As far as a solution, I find that endings are most satisfying in this genre when they address the challenges relevant to parts of the world. Making the landmarks of each unique region's questline come together for one massive payoff and emphasizing their contribution is really important. Maybe it's artifacts, characters, or the people of those lands. Once you're there, all that's left is to have the cutscene show the player character settling down, dying, or coming to some canonical end. Even if it is open-ended, as long as the vibes communicate a conclusion, it works.
Pokémon has been good at that, because as a child you aren't going to simply stop growing or training Pokémon, but it acknowledges that you worked hard, became the champion, and you may even return home and bask in how far you came. But, it usually continues with a clear distinction that we are now in an "epilogue" state, hinting that from here on out the events aren't so strictly canon.
Comparing it to a restaurant experience versus "leftovers" works surprisingly well. Great analogy.
Also, you've got me thinking that maybe it doesn't take much, doesn't need to be grand or elaborate. Something, as you said, that communicates the right vibes for a conclusion, and acknowledges the player's contributions, even if only briefly, might be totally appropriate.
Thanks for your comment! You're helping us get better at this.
Divine cybermancy did it correctly, I think.
If you finish all the routes, you can basically seal yourself on a deserted floating island to escape the cycles of guilt (ie. the game). This gives you a finishing point.
BUT, at the center of the island is a seal. At any point, you can break that seal and start a NG+.
Hm, that's clever! I've never even heard of Divine Cybermancy, but I'm grateful you told us about it.
i think the premise of the question is incorrect. open world doesn't reference the narrative, therefore the "end" only goes as far as the narrative leads you.
if you want a game with a true end of life experience you need to remove the guard rails of a narrative. something between a RPG and a Sandbox.
where NPCs also participate in crafting the world, and are also afflicted by the sands of time.
I think you've nailed exactly why I love the Crusader Kings franchise so much, at least for what it attempts to be. Its ambition is to be a blend of strategy/simulation where anything can happen (and, like you said, where NPCs also participate and influence the world) with RPG elements and character-driven stories.
Thanks for your comment!
Thanks, now I want to play Kenshi again!
Ooh, you know what? I forgot about Kenshi. That actually looked pretty interesting and I might need to try it.
I think RDR2 is a good middleground. You can keep playing as John now, but it's not the same.
Imagine my confusion when I read your comment as "R2-D2" 😂
Good point, thanks for your comment!
@@gamesbydesign8037 Haha, I'm R2-D2 would have a good open world game as well!
@@zekebrunt Maybe that's what Star Wars Outlaws should have been: a Star Wars game where you play as R2-D2 and spend the whole game influencing major political events without ever getting any of the credit.
new vegas did it right, it ends
New Vegas really is the answer to so many of the problems in Bethesda games, isn't it?
People who love ENDING games need to seek help.
"End me, daddy."
-Me, to the game I'm playing.
I need help seeking more games that have an actual ending. I love them.
@@TheCraziestFox To do what?
@@danieladamczyk4024 Play them. Finish them. Discard them like used underwear.
A lot of open world games have endings. Just because it's open world doesn't mean there's no ending. A lot of survival games you keep going when there's no final boss till you get bored or feel like you beat it.
You're absolutely right. It seems like being open-world doesn't at all limit the game from having a satsifying ending, it just changes how that ending can be handled. Then, there are some games that just don't have endings, or have endings poorly tacked on.
I'm sure there's an art to getting it just right. If you've got any more insights, please let us know!
@gamesbydesign8037 Well Phantasy Star 4 is an old RPG that is open world from the 90's. It has an amazing storyline to it. Up until FF13 all Final Fantasy games before it that where part of the main Final Fantasy games were all open world. Some have better endings than others. Yeah definitely some have better endings than others that's for sure. The art to getting it right is all on the story of the game.